Is WordPress Too Safe?

I love blogging on WordPress. I have “met” a few other bloggers that share the same interest for Star Wars that I do, and in turn, I have followed other blogs that I normally wouldn’t. It’s much broader than starwars.com where I previously had my blog. Hyperspace/starwars.com was fabulous because everyone there loved Star Wars and it’s all they wanted to write about and dissect. The downside was because it was all they ever wanted to talk about, you didn’t get to expand your mind and read about EVERYTHING.

I mean, WordPress really does have a bit of everything and you can find almost any kind of blog on here. I find the community of bloggers to be incredibly supportive and I love reading the comments I get at the end of a blog I post.

However, a recent incident has been weighing on my mind lately because of a WordPress blog I sent to my sister a few months ago. It was a Freshly Pressed and I thought she would enjoy reading what this blogger had to say about “soul countries” or something like that (I can’t remember what the exact blog was about). On the contrary, my sister strongly disagreed with what the author had written about. In response to my two line email that was along the gist of, “Hey, what do you think of this blog? Thought you might like it, so passing it along,” I got a 3 paragraph email in reply. She didn’t like it at all and had valid points to backup what she thought. Intrigued, I wrote her back asking her to actually comment on the blog with what she thought.

“Why would I do that?” she asked. “Clearly she just wants everyone to praise her article and agree with her.”

I was shocked. Is that really what my sister thought of the blogging world or is that really what the community is like here on WordPress? Are people too afraid to voice how they really feel if they disagree with what a blogger says?

Go to Freshly Pressed. See how many comments a blogger has on Freshly Pressed and see how many are negative.

Grant you – that might be the wrong pool to pull from because the WordPress Gods Above choose a blog to be Freshly Pressed because it will strike the right cord with the majority of people. Or maybe they choose the ones with the least amount of controversy.

Thankfully, I feel that the WordPress community is very aware of trolling and the people here try to keep that to a minimum. Contrast that to my YouTube account where almost every other comment is a troll. Trolling is detestable and I hate it mainly because it’s unproductive. I have some comments on my YouTube videos that actually provide advice on how to better another video, but those are few and far between. Most either are inappropriate or downright mean and with no real purpose.

A real comment from my YouTube account

But are we so afraid as a community of even seeming like a troll, that we are afraid of voicing contrary opinions?

There has been a few instances that I have been blogging that people have disagreed with what I have written (most notably, this one) but on a whole, people have agreed and been friendly. I am not saying I want people to disagree with every single thing that I write, but I wonder if anyone reads my blogs, disagrees, but moves on because they don’t want to open a debate? I want your debate! I want your contrasting point of view because through that, I learn more than if everyone just agreed all the time.

I suppose this bothers me the most because I realized I have fallen prey to this fear of voicing my disagreement on a blog. If I disagree, I’m afraid of saying so because my “tone of voice” online may come out rude or bitchy, when I may not mean it to sound like that. I’m afraid of hurting someone’s feelings online because I know how delicate that can be. I’m afraid of sparking off an angry tirade from the blogger who was happy living in their own world of everyone-loves-what-I-blog-about.

Where is the balance? I really don’t have an answer to that and a small part of me hopes that everyone disagrees with what I’m saying this post just for the hell of it. But honestly – has WordPress turned into too much of a “safe zone”?

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6 thoughts on “Is WordPress Too Safe?”

I disagree that people don’t disagree with blogs…
Actually, I think most people who take the time to blog are attempting to be friendly, but professional. Also, many are working on being professional authors. If I write something that comes across as harsh, or rude, it might come back to haunt me when I’m making gazillions of dollars off of my books.
This is why I avoid controversial subjects on my blog, and avoid commenting on uber-controversial posts – i.e. religion, politics, etc., not truly controversial subjects like “Is Han Solo or Boba Fett cooler?”
In other words, those who are in the WordPress sandbox work very hard to play nice.
I do disagree from time to time, but try to keep my comments thoughtful and friendly.

L. Palmer – you bring up a good point of a lot of people on this site attempting to become a professional author. I should have thought of that. And it’s also good to keep in mind that anything on the internet can come back to haunt you and you have to be ready for that when you are posting online. I always have my maiden name used on social networking places so that if a future employer looks for me, they shouldn’t find me.
Maybe I’m surprised that people are playing nice, when compared to the rest of the cyber world, I feel like no one hesitates to bash whatever you’ve worked hard on.

I’m not afraid to disagree with people here, and neither are most of the bloggers I know. Freshly Pressed is a different game. Neither I, nor many of the bloggers I know read the Freshly Pressed posts.

Just yesterday, I got into a debate with a commenter on a particular post who made, in my opinion, a sexist remark against men. I rebutted respectfully, and though we argued, it didn’t get nasty.

I have had people disagree with me on my blog plenty of times, but it never gets ugly. As long as people disagree with my respectfully there’s no reason to get bent out of shape.

twindaddy – why don’t you read Freshly Pressed? I find a lot of the posts there interesting and in the beginning, it was how I found some of the bloggers I now follow regularly. (I do like your little icon on the side of your blog “not featured on freshly pressed”)
It’s like I just mentioned to L. Palmer – I could just be surprised that people are so respectful and nice on here that I feel like it can’t be right and people are just not really saying what they want. Sad, but true.